Eagles Nest Cave Diver Death

[Kevin Carlisle]

You know outside of the depth involved, 500ft penetration is not a lot of penetration. Were talking a few minutes of swimming and thats it. Not that there needs to be more examples but this sounds like a good one for any CCR instructors out there. Maybe this example might sink into someone's head and keep them from makng the same mistakes.

 

[jupitermermaid]

I'm not going to criticize anyone, because I have made a couple stupid decisions in my diving career that could have made me a statistic. In fact, I may only be alive now because I joined SB originally to ask a question about EN that I felt uncomfortable about. I was a newbie diver (26 dives under my belt), and my ex-fiance wanted to teach me doubles at EN. If it wasn't for the bashing (and gentle advice) the members of SB gave me I might be dead now, due to trusting other people (especially the wrong people) too much. I feel bad that people die doing things they shouldn't be doing, especially when they "should" know better. But haven't we all pushed the button at one time or another and gotten away with it? Knowing what I know now, I'd never go into EN without proper training, and I doubt that will ever happen. Yes, these guys extended their boundies; one died, and the other has to live with that knowledge for the rest of his life. So sad. I'm so glad SB is here to educate people and give advice to those who look for it to keep more people alive through that advice!

 

[Dive-aholic]

My understanding is they only had one bailout each. If that's the case, they didn't have enough bailout for the dive. Had they taken a CCR cave course they would have known this...

 

[jkaterenchuk]

My understanding is they only had one bailout each. If that's the case, they didn't have enough bailout for the dive. Had they taken a CCR cave course they would have known this...

How do you know this?
What was the BO gas?
What was the dive plan? Team BO or individual?
What was the size of the BO tank, start pressure?
Where there any other tanks staged? Top of mound? Log at 20ft?
If staged tanks what were the sizes, psi and gas?
What is the diver SAC/RMV?

These are the questions that would occur immediately to me if someone told me that they only had one BO tank and before I would make the judgement.

Also, they should have learned how to calculate gas requirements much earlier than on a Cave CCR course.

If they truly had only two OC tanks available as a team then I am lost for words. I cannot imagine a scenerio in which they could have gotten out running out of gas or missing deco with planning a total CCR failure at maximum penetration.

John

 

[Jax]

If they truly had only two OC tanks available as a team then I am lost for words. I cannot imagine a scenerio in which they could have gotten out running out of gas or missing deco with planning a total CCR failure at maximum penetration.

John

To have planned this, they would have had to have been CCR caved trained . . . which, as the answer is 'not', is the unfortunate answer to all your questions above.

Has a formal 'initial report' been given on the incident?

 

[TSandM]

To have planned this, they would have had to have been CCR caved trained . . . which, as the answer is 'not', is the unfortunate answer to all your questions above.

I don't think this is true. All cave divers are trained to calculate needed gas for exit -- and technical divers are trained to calculate needed gas for gas loss or deco gas loss. One of the most defining things about technical or overhead diving is that you have to solve such problems where you are. If they were not carrying enough bailout (and I don't know this and haven't seen any informed report anywhere) then either they just didn't think about it, or they made some very questionable decisions about how much was enough.

However, nothing I have read says that anyone ran out of gas here, so whether the bailout was adequate or not does not appear to have had a chance to play a role, unless it was simply by increasing the victim's anxiety.

There are many unanswered questions in this accident, but the big one is why he had already bailed out, and why he went back on the loop. We may be lucky enough, as we were with Richard Mork's death, to get a report on the condition of the equipment, but more likely, we won't, and we will never know.

Rebreathers continue to scare me.

 

[wedivebc]

I don't think this is true. All cave divers are trained to calculate needed gas for exit -- and technical divers are trained to calculate needed gas for gas loss or deco gas loss.

The BIG difference is OC divers use the gas consumed on entry to gauge the gas required to exit (1/3rds) CCR divers have to rely on whatever OC experience they have to gauge predicted gas requirements and I suspect many fall short of their estimation of gas consumption.

 

[TSandM]

How do they do that, Dave? Is it based on time? I mean, I can imagine with a CCR that you have to use some other kind of metric than gas consumption to set a turn parameter for the dive -- whether that's just penetration time, or how much deco you want to rack up, or whatever. And if you set that parameter, and you know what depth you're doing, it shouldn't be too hard to calculate OC gas consumption. At least, I had to do those calculations in my Cave 1 class.

 

[lamont]

I think what Lamont was referring to in his earlier post is some divers (usually cave) advocating running a DIL that would have an equivalent PO2 as you would utilize if on OC in the situation in which you have a hard bottom. And the other camp that support not using a hypoxic DIL on a dive in which it is not required. Such as someone using 10/50 for a 100ft dive because it is what is left in the tank.

No, really, some have argued for having a hot dil so that in a dil flush you'd get a ppO2 of 1.8 or something like that. I think the argument flared up after there was an accident or two which was possibly attributed to hypoxia due to doing a dil flush near the surface with something like 10/70.

 

[Meng_Tze]

To have correctly planned and executed the dive at hand in this case, one needed to be Cave, CCR and Trimix trained. Lacking any one of these would raise the risks exponentially, especially diving a CCR and the depth.

I have dived EN on both OC and CCR. Each time I did, it was planned in advance, with the correct gases and volumes, RT plans and contingencies. Always a fresh scrubber in the breather and cells that tracked correctly.

I am not saying these two divers did not plan it correctly, all I am pointing out is that this is not a dive you 'just go do'. By not crossing all T's and dotting all i's, having even the slightest issue will put you over the line of no return.